Yes, like all the best disasters, Eyam’s outbreak of Black Death had been turned into a tourist attraction.

Along with thousands of other children, Cooper had visited this village with a school party. It had been a sort of living history lesson, collecting the work sheets from the museum, gawping at the plague tableaux, looking eagerly for the stocks where miscreants had once been pelted with rotten food. Those were his favourite sort of lessons.

Two hundred and sixty people had died when the plague hit Eyam. Yet the rector, William Mompesson, had rallied the villagers to a famously selfless act of isolation. He’d told them that it was impossible for them to escape by running away, that many of them were already infected and carried the seeds of death in their clothes. He told them that the fate of the surrounding country was in their hands. They broke off all contact with the outside world for five months, as the plague cut down the population of Eyam, one by one.

For that, Mompesson had been rewarded with the death of his own wife. Now, hers was the only grave of a plague victim to be found in the Eyam churchyard.

Despite its role as a macabre tourist attraction, Cooper could tell Eyam remained a thriving community. It was good to see a village that still had a butcher’s shop, for example. A high-class butcher’s too, according to the sign. In many villages, the shops had long since gone, the parish church had been converted into a holiday home, and the vicarage was providing bed and breakfast. And, of course, every village post office was now the Old Post Office, selling teas and ice cream instead of stamps and tax discs.

The first address on his list was in Laurel Close, on the outskirts of the village. Cooper could see straight away that Laurel Close was an old people’s housing estate. Quiet and well tended, with stone-faced bungalows standing in neat rows behind well-mown grass, like gravestones in a cemetery. The image was appropriate, really. This could be a place where the main topics of conversation were illness and death, and the latest funeral was the highlight of the week.

Ah, well. No more time to be lost. Cooper got out of his car and knocked on the first door.

DEBORAH RAWSON TOOK a long drag on her cigarette. ‘Let’s get this straight. Are you saying that Patrick was murdered?’

‘We don’t know that for sure, Mrs Rawson.’

‘It’s a bit much to take in.’

‘Yes, of course.’

When Fry arrived at the mortuary in Edendale, she’d been met by a woman in her late thirties. Short hair, a pale, sharp face. Suspicious eyes. Her brother was somewhere around, having made an excuse to get out into the fresh air. Fry couldn’t blame him.

‘I’m sorry to have to ask you questions at a time like this,’ said Fry. ‘But you’re quite sure this is your husband?’

‘Absolutely.’